


A Star is Moving Somewhere

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Christmas nonsense, F/F, F/M, Multi, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 21:17:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: Elaine has unexpected leave for the holidays. Julia didn’t expect Elaine to offer to spend it withher.





	A Star is Moving Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr (winter 2016).
> 
> Elaine = f!England, Julia = f!Prussia, and Luise = f!Germany

“The hell are _ you _ doing here?”

Captain Elaine Kirkland looks like a Dream Come True standing on the doorstep of the Beilschmidt unit. _ Most _ people would dream about having a young, attractive and overachieving Captain of the Fleet unexpectedly coming home to them, sleek and glossy in their black landing uniform (there’s a huge niche of the fetish market devoted to various iterations of _ just _ that scene) - but Julia Maria Frederika Beilschmidt is not most people.

Julia Beilschmidt has a _ routine. _ This is her time off work; her sister Luise is out walking the three dogs, and Julia is using her alone time to try and conquer the arseholish _ Eagle Pose _ for yoga that fucking Daniel Héderváry from two units down has bet her half a dozen beers she can’t hold for a minute straight without toppling over sideways.

Plus, none of Julia’s fantasies involving Fleet captains have ever included her opening the door to one of them whilst she’s wearing nothing but a _ chicks dig me _ t-shirt and blue polka-dot knickers.

“I got leave,” says Elaine with her usual perfect dryness, “and hello to you too.” She looks tired, her blonde hair beginning to wisp out of the low braided bun she wears it in just above her nape, and the travel bag slung over her right shoulder is heavy enough she is beginning to lean in that direction.

Fabulous knickers or not, Julia takes the bold approach, _ eyes _ Elaine up and down, and then leans very deliberately against the doorframe so she blocks her whole doorway. “No way you’re coming in. You’re in _ uniform, _ shiny fucking buttons and all. Do you want my neighbours to think I’m respectable?”

The flat look Elaine gives Julia for that is worthy of promotion. Who needs lasers when you’ve got a captain’s glare as a defensive system? “You have the highest paid job in this building; your sister is in top first percentile in the best university in this system, and you _ both _ bake cakes for your neighbours and look after their plants when they need to go away on business. I hardly think _ one _ little Fleet uniform is going to tarnish the terrible reputation you are clearly _ striving _ to make for yourself.”

“A _ captain’s _ uniform,” Julia stresses, grinning a little at Elaine’s obvious exasperation and feeling her canines dig into her lip. She’s doing a good job if the sarcasm is already correct and present. “Every centimetre of braided rope draped across that flat chest of yours is a week’s worth of scandal I’m going to have to cause the neighbours.”

Elaine twitches at _ flat. _ “I’m sure they’ll be _ horrified _ when you turn up in front of their door with plain chocolate cake rather than a cherry-laden Black Forest.” Elaine shifts her bag on her shoulder, and Julia wonders for a moment if she is going to be hit with it. (If she is, Elaine can sleep outside.) “I brought kirsch.”

Booze wins. Julia moves out of the doorway.

Elaine knows her way around the Beilschmidt unit well enough, moving through into the living room area and carefully setting her travel bag down by the smaller sofa. (With no-one blocking the sensor, the front door automatically closes and locks itself with an annoyingly quiet _ chime _ that Luise won’t let Julia alter for something cooler.)

“Didn’t expect the Fleet to release their shining star for the holidays,” says Julia, resting her hip against the larger sofa and watching idly as Elaine crouches down to begin rummaging through her bag. It’s lucky the dogs are out; it’s been eight months since they last saw Elaine, and all three of them would swarm her and stick their inquisitive noses in her luggage. “You said you were busy in your last holo.”

“We _ are _ \- and holiday leave was booked out three _ sol _ months ago. But one of the other Fleet Captains currently berthed had a bad split with his boyfriend yesterday, who he _ had _ been planning to spend a week and a half’s leave with in some fancy spa on Miranda.”

“He decided to stay and work it instead?”

“That he did. So suddenly there was a week and a half’s leave available for one berthed captain beginning this morning, and the lucky draw allotted it to me.” There is something sweetly vindictive about the sharp corners of Elaine’s smile that suggests _ luck _ might not have been the only deciding factor - in another life, the bitch had probably been minor royalty leading a terrifying _ coup d’état. _ In _ this _ life, she merely holds up the bottle she has found in her bag, twisting her wrist to and fro _ just so _ so the bottle’s cut glass glitters like icy diamonds in the golden lights of the Beilschmidt Christmas tree. “Kirsch. A Christmas gift for you and your sister.”

Julia tosses the end of her silver braid that she’d been picking at over her shoulder, loping lazily over to her lover to pluck the offered bottle of booze from Elaine’s hand.

…She’s impressed. “…This is from _ Europa_.” Elaine has brought them fucking _ expensive _ kirsch. The cherries are grown underwater on the moon, and that and the local atmosphere, and the fact the finished product is then chilled for a month in Europa’s legendary ice, gives the kirsch a flavour impossible to recreate anywhere else in the galaxy.

“Never let it be said that I don’t know how to bribe my way into anywhere.” Elaine’s smile is a cocky thing when she stands up again, but Julia lets the woman have it since she’s just handed over a bottle of booze worth a month and a half’s paycheque. The import tax on this shit is _ astronomical. _ Literally. Julia feels like hugging it. Instead she very carefully sets it down on the side-table, where it sparkles very prettily in the lights. “I have some marzipan too, but I bought that on the way here.”

Julia nods - that’s understandable, really -, and then grabs the front of Elaine’s ridiculous fetish jacket so she can drag the other woman in and kiss her.

Part of the reason Elaine made it so quickly to a captain’s position is her quick and smart response time. There’s a beat of stunned stillness when Julia pulls her hard against her own body, the breath driven out of Elaine’s chest is an ungainly _ huff, _ but the next thing Julia knows she has one of her lover’s hands threaded wickedly through her braid at her nape and cupped around her head, the other spread dangerously low in the dip of Julia’s back.

Her lips part, a sexy little noise slipping out of them at the scratch of Julia’s teeth on their swell - and Elaine’s voice, when she speaks with barely a breath between their mouths, has dropped to match it. “You’re not afraid my respectability might rub off on you?”

Julia snorts at her, a sharp hot thrill spiralling down her spine when she feels Elaine’s grip tighten in her hair. “It’s a thin cover on you, _ Engelein_. If I rip off those stupid buttons, you’re as filthy as the rest of us.”

“_Mm_,” Elaine angles their mouths together again for a moment, silencing Julia for a moment with the deep swipe of her tongue, “tear my uniform and I’ll throttle you.”

But only a moment. “That a promise?”

They kiss again, and Julia shoves hard on Elaine’s front to push the other woman down onto the smaller sofa, casually settling her legs either side of Elaine’s waist so she can straddle the captain’s lap. Elaine’s hands cup the back of her bare thighs, slide lazily up and down and leave gooseflesh in their wake as Julia pushes her into the back of the cushions, pulling Elaine’s head up so she can continue to demandingly kiss her from above.

The move does pretty things to the captain’s long throat; Julia settles her bruising mouth there and digs in her teeth, relishing the vibration of Elaine’s _ hiss _ beneath her lips. Her busy hands, meanwhile, set about unhooking some of the Fleet woman’s ridiculously prissy braid so she can get Elaine’s uniform jacket open, Elaine’s nails biting into her legs in swift retaliation.

“Where’s your sister?”

“Out walking the dogs.” Julia gets the braided rope unhooked, and begins work on Elaine’s buttons. _ God, _ does she hate the Fleet landing uniforms. The regular wear is a lot easier to get off in a hurry. “She should be back in about an hour, if you want to wish her a merry Christmas before you go.”

“You’re going to kick me out?” Julia can _ hear _ the lift of Elaine’s eyebrow.

“…You’re staying?” Julia has to pause in her surprise, peering with some confusion at Elaine’s face when her braid doesn’t swing irritatingly between them. “Don’t you go to your family’s for the holidays when you have leave?”

The Kirklands live a good few hours away. If Elaine wants to get there before it gets too dark…

Elaine shakes her head slowly, pushing a little on the back of Julia’s thighs so Julia rests more of her weight against her. “My mother’s away at a fancy do with her friends for five days, and I’ll be damned if I go stay with one of my brothers or sisters for Christmas without her there.”

It slips out before Julia can catch it, too bitter-edged to be insincere: “They’d have to put up with you if you did. Because _ nobody _ denies one of the Fleet’s extra special snowflakes anything they want, even if it’s last-minute at the holidays.”

Naturally, Elaine takes it badly. Her expression shutters in a heartbeat, her hands and warmth falling away from Julia at once. “If I’m an imposition, Julia; I’ll leave.”

Even her _ accent _ changes when she’s pissed.

Julia bares her teeth in the beginnings of a snarl, more irritated at herself than Elaine - but _ still _ irritated at Elaine for being such a touchy, uppity bitch. “You know damn well that’s not what I meant.”

“Then don’t get snippy with _ me _ because _ you _ decided to quit!”

“Did you forget, Rotkehlchen?” Julia keeps her hands on Elaine. For balance, mostly, but still so close to being wrapped around Elaine’s pretty snobbish little throat. She can feel the hard beat of Elaine’s pulse beneath her thumbs. “I was _ fired. _ Dishonourable discharge. I have the papers. Luise won’t let me frame them.”

The joke isn’t funny, but it’s not entirely a joke. Julia had wanted the papers hung on the living room wall, right beside the print-out of her three offers of employment in the domestic engineering sector that she’d received the day after her dishonourable discharge had been entered into the system. _ Fuck _ the Fleet.

“Like hell were you fired.” Elaine sounds - and looks - tired again, weariness smoothing the vim out of her that Julia finds so attractive. Her shoulders slope under Julia’s hands: a reminder that even the most brilliant, vicious Fleet captains are (still) only human at the end of the day, fragile bones wrapped in delicate skin and moving through spite and electricity alone. “They had to _ threaten _ you with it because you punched the goddamn golden son of the Premier in the face.”

Julia sinks down - heavily - on Elaine’s lap with a frown. “He was being a dick to you.”

“Francis is _ always _ a dick to me; it’s my perk for being engaged to the bastard.” Elaine will never _ thank _ anyone for defending her honour (she can usually do that very well for _ herself, _ if she so desires), but she tends to be touched by the attempt being made anyway. Julia can see it, the kinder softening in the woman under her, and the slow, tentative return of Elaine’s hands to her waist, long fingers pressing heat through Julia’s thin t-shirt. “He knew he deserved it. Why do you think he didn’t press charges?”

“…I always thought it was because you spread your legs and gave him a good fucking?” Elaine’s barely-blooming smile turns flat so fast Julia begins to laugh. Mock-horrified: “_Engelein_, are you saying you wouldn’t fuck your fiancé for me?”

“If I needed to fuck him for him to be a decent human being, I wouldn’t be marrying him.”

“…Did you just call Francis Bonnefoy a decent human being?” A turn-up for the historical records. Francis Bonnefoy is many things - blond, blue-eyed, powerful politically and supposedly very good in bed - but Elaine is very rarely complimentary about any of them. And vice versa, though in every interview he’s given where the topic of his ‘talented young’ fiancée arose, he’s claimed to be _ delighted _ about the match.

They look very good together anyway. Even if there’s a betting pool about whether they’re going to kill each other or if one or both of them will be assassinated by a third party before the wedding.

“Stop diverting.” Elaine pinches Julia’s sides, ruthless with her nips. (_Who’s _ diverting?) “You _ walked, _ Julia. They had to fire you and cite the punch because they didn’t want to charge you with _ desertion._” Desertion is harder to wipe off the records. “They’d still take you back in a heartbeat - you’re one of the best engineers to ever come out of the Academy.”

Elaine should tell Julia something she _ doesn’t _ know.

Julia sniffs, tossing back her braid from where it’s slid forward over her breast - _ again_. Stupid hair. “You’re just saying that because you miss having your hottest fuckbuddy on your ship.”

“…You’re not entirely wrong,” Elaine’s hands slip around Julia’s back, the slow spread of her fingers sending a shiver up Julia’s spine, “but mostly I miss having someone _ competent _ in charge of the engineering on my ship. Your replacement is a fuckwit. Have I told you that your replacement is a fuckwit?”

Julia grins, and wraps her arms securely around Elaine’s neck. Might as well settle in for storytime. “You have, actually, told me that my replacement is a fuckwit.” In numerous holos.

“Well, he _ is. _ We were initiating docking procedures the other day as part of the standard port maintenance checks, and he somehow thought that that would be a good time to try out his new system for giving quick bursts of ‘extra’ power to the main engine.” Elaine huffs, clearly still peeved about it all, and Julia bites her tongue. She’s not in the Fleet any more; she has nothing to say about fuckwits damaging her former baby. “We broke the entryway of the main docking tunnel, and would’ve no doubt gone straight into Port Control if the deck crew didn’t have such quick reflexes.”

“Port Control shat themselves, huh.”

Elaine’s lips twist _ up - _ no-one in the Fleet has much love for the over-finicky Port Control. “It was the most excitement they’ve had in half a year. But yes, they almost shat themselves, and gave me an earful because of it.”

“Oh, you _ poor _ little captain.” Julia kisses Elaine’s forehead with all the acting of the finest of hams.

“I passed on the bollocking, believe you me.” Her captain’s voice is grim. The fuckwit is probably bleeding somewhere.

“Didn’t much doubt you’d take any opportunity to lash someone with that sharp tongue of yours.” Julia noses thoughtfully along Elaine’s hairline, not quite nuzzling. The only time Elaine’s hair is truly neat is when she’s in uniform - and Elaine is far too often in uniform, the look both critically feline and severe. It’s the black uniform. “You could break a man with that thing.”

“Just a man?”

Julia pauses. There’s an _ interesting _ shift in the tone of Elaine’s words, an upward lilt of speech and a downward brush of her golden lashes. “You got someone else in mind?”

Elaine’s smile is an obvious knowing thing: _ you know the answer to that. _ Julia snorts again but kisses it, enjoying for a moment the slow plush press of lips, the intimate slide of her own skin against the tight weave of the Fleet uniform. She pulls blindly at buttons, pushing open Elaine’s jacket and pressing it down Elaine’s arms without breaking their kiss, and for a moment the both of them are a tangle of cloth and limbs.

“Fuck your wardrobe,” Julia announces when she finally has the damn Fleet jacket in a wad of blackness and braid in her hands. She tosses it away aggressively, thoroughly peeved - and promptly knocks off two unfortunate baubles and a candy cane from her long-suffering Christmas tree. Elaine laughs at her. “Fuck _ you._”

“Yes, that is the idea-” Elaine yelps when Julia bites at her mouth, dragging Elaine’s lower lip between her teeth and holding it there until one of Elaine’s hands reaches up and makes her gasp by twisting sharply in her hair.

They scrabble around the sofa together, part-fight, part making out, Julia’s hand shoved up beneath the white sleeveless turtleneck Elaine has always worn beneath the outer layer of her uniform. The muscles of her stomach jump pleasantly under Julia’s palm, and she bucks and spits like a drenched cat when Julia pulls abruptly at the shirt, trying to yank it up over Elaine’s head and getting it caught on her bun.

Julia takes the opportunity to pin Elaine’s hips under hers on the sofa cushions again, ducking down and biting kisses into the unmarked skin down Elaine’s front whilst Elaine attempts to both get her stupid tight turtleneck off whilst lying down _ and _ elbow Julia in the head. Elaine is far too ticklish though, easily distracted by a softer kiss or a flutter of fingers over her ribs, down her sides. She gets her shirt off, but most of her savagery is redirected into grabbing Julia as soon as her turtleneck hits the floor, both hands demanding on the back of Julia’s neck and Julia pulled down, down, against the dark bruise of Elaine’s mouth, the rapid rise-fall of the captain’s breasts pushing hard against her own.

Julia pushes _ back_, not so easily devoured - and is punished with one of Elaine’s thighs rising it hard between her own. With Elaine’s boot flat on the sofa cushions and her knee bent Julia finds herself suddenly riding the other woman’s thigh, a hot rough friction between sensitive skin, her knickers, and Elaine’s tight uniform trousers. The abrupt _ grind _ of it sends all her thoughts spiralling down between her legs, her mouth going slack and touch going soft over where she’d been trying to undo Elaine’s breastband.

Her thoughts spin, knocked out of order and deserting common sense. “…Did you not fancy stopping at Francis’ for the hols? Or is he busy too?”

“Don’t know.“ Elaine’s mouth is pretty when wet, the flick of her tongue running light across it whilst thoughts cross her eyes. At least one of the two of them is bleeding; red smears at the corner of Elaine’s lips, something she pauses over with a vaguely confused expression when she raises her thumb to touch the source of the iron taste and comes back with it stained.

Julia bends, wraps her own wet mouth around the digit and licks the red away.

Elaine watches her with slightly hazier eyes than before. ”…I’ve not told him I have leave.”

“…Oh.” There’s a heat bleeding into Julia’s throat that has nothing to do with her crotch, which is saying something, because a _ lot _ of her right now is very focused on her crotch. She coughs, scrambling for ego to try and cover up the flush she knows shows too starkly on her pale-ass skin. “Well, I’d say I’m flattered, but who _ wouldn’t _ want to spend Christmas with the awesome me?”

Elaine shrugs, smooth shoulder-blades sliding like wings on the sofa cushions under her, and reaches her hand between her breasts to open the front-closing clasp of her breastband. “I’ll send him a holo tomorrow. He won’t mind; our agreement still stands, and he quite likes you.“ At that exact moment, Julia could not care less if Francis likes her, hates her, or is currently plotting her swift and imminent death - just as long as she can finish her business with the guy’s half-naked fiancée first. "Even if you tried to break his nose.” Julia _ mmm_s in what she hopes is an interested, encouraging sort of way, already busy moving her mouth over Elaine’s fingers, over soft bare tits between Elaine’s fingers, all scratching teeth and open-mouthed kisses that have the captain shivering under her, breathless around her edges. “Plus, he’s still sleeping with his bodyguard.”

“…Sunshine?” That flickers a thought in Julia’s memories: some strapping young honey blond with a grin like a solar flare, big mouth and broad shoulders. Sticky fingered, and a quick conquest for Francis - but not so quick at helping Francis make a conquest of his _ beloved_. “Still turning down that threesome?”

Elaine pushes some of Julia’s hair out of Julia’s face, raking it back from Julia’s forehead and around her ear like a caress. “I have other priorities.”

Julia grins, affectionately careless, tipping her cheek into it. “Careful, Engelein. People might begin to think you actually _ like _ me.”

Elaine _ looks _ at her. Again.

“…Oh.”

Julia is saved from embarrassment, delight and her own stupidity by the front door politely chiming and swishing open, a flood of ecstatic _ woof_s and wagging tails streaming into the room.

Elaine yelps, immediately scrambling to try and reach for her abandoned turtleneck on the floor - but that just overbalances Julia, who topples in an ungainly _ thud _ off of the sofa and takes Elaine, their legs still tangled together, with her.

Adding insult to injury, the three dogs - Aster, a Dachshund; Blackie, a German Shepherd, and Berlitz, a Hovawart - all immediately trot over, covered in grass, twigs and mud, and beginning to lick every centimetre of Julia and Elaine’s bare skin that they can find.

Between the two women, they have a _ lot _ of bare skin.

Julia sacrifices her lover to save herself, pushing Elaine off of her and onto the floor and cheerfully ignoring Elaine’s pleading to the dogs - _ oh God; yes, it’s nice to see you too, now stop, _ stop! - and clawing her way back up to her feet to meet the questioning gaze of her gawking sister.

Three sets of dog reins hang lax in Luise’s hand, the younger woman’s eyes travelling from Julia - in nothing but a t-shirt and knickers -, to the dogs - muddy and delighted -, to the woman _ buried _ by dogs - clearly missing clothes on the upper part of her body -, and, finally, to the Fleet captain’s jacket in a crumpled heap beside the wounded Christmas tree.

_ "Mäuschen,” _ says Julia, and smiles as winningly as possible as she pulls down the hiked-up hem of her t-shirt. “You’re back early.”

“Yes, I -” It’s with apparent relief that Luise takes her eyes away from the rest of the room to look at Julia again, red beginning to bloom high in her cheeks like poppies. “Blackie found a goose to chase. I thought it prudent to return home before the goose brought back the whole flock to chase _ him.” _

“For the _ love of God _ -” On the floor, Elaine is reaching her breaking point concerning public nudity and dog drool. _ “Julia!” _

“…Captain Kirkland?” Luise inquires hesitantly of her sister. As though either of the two Beilschmidt sisters is at all likely to confuse Elaine’s particular exasperated yell for anyone else’s after Julia’s long and involved history in the Fleet and with her.

“That’s her,” says Julia brightly. Just in case.

“And you and her… on the _ sofa?” _

“She brought us kirsch,” says Julia. The bottle is still very sparkly.

Luise flounders, innate outrage at cleanliness defiled warring with her appreciation for alcohol. “…That’s very kind of her.”

_ “Julia!” _ Elaine snaps again, trying to brace her forearm against Aster’s particularly slobbery licks to her face whilst her other hand is trying to close the flapping edges of her breastband again.

Luise whistles, a shrill sound of rising notes, and the dogs go obediently to her heels - though not before Aster gets in one last slobbery lick to Elaine’s nose. Elaine _ ugh_s, tired and a little disgusted, before promptly realising that now, with the dogs gone, she has absolutely _ nothing _ covering her up from Luise’s increasingly flustered eyes.

Julia cannot tell which of her two companions goes the reddest or makes the most strangled sound in the back of her throats, but the speed at which Luise whirls around so she has her back to Elaine and Elaine darts over the Christmas tree to grab her abandoned jacket should get them both nominated for some kind of galactic sporting event.

“She brought marzipan as well,” Julia tells her embarrassed sister, and reaches over to give Aster a scratch behind the ears as his tail thumps the floor.

“I’m going to _ shove it down your throat,” _ Elaine snarls, gorgeous with her golden hair a mess around her face and a half-buttoned black jacket on, its braid dangling loose down her chest. The colours are stark against her skin with no turtleneck underneath, the bruises from Julia’s mouth beginning to purple down Elaine’s throat. “Box and all.”

“Can I have some of the kirsch first?” Julia asks, openly enjoying the view.

Elaine’s wadded-up turtleneck hits her in the head.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Fuckwit' wasn't meant to be anyone in particular, so feel free to imagine whoever you please in that role, but 'Sunshine' is Alfred, if that's not clear. Alfred (and Francis!) _really_ wants that threesome.


End file.
